Name
Philip Gordon Twigg
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
24/11/1942
31
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Second Radio Officer
Merchant Navy
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
TOWER HILL MEMORIAL
Panel 16.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
None
UK & Other Memorials
St. Saviour's Church Memorial, Hitchin, Hitchin Boys’ Grammar School Memorial (WW2), Merchant Navy Memorial to the Missing, Trinity Square, London
Biography
He attended the Hitchin Grammar School from 1922-1927 and in 1927 was described as being a medium left-arm bowler of possibilities but a timorous bat and weak field. He passed his Oxford School Certificate and on leaving the school was employed in banking. By 1933 he was a preventive officer in the Customs Service and in 1934 started on a medical course at Edinburgh University with a view to training as a doctor. He became well known for riding an unusual type of motorcycle, the Panther V Twin 249cc.
At what stage he joined the Merchant Navy is not known but he was reported missing by the Spring of 1943. At the time he was 2nd Radio Officer of the S.S. ‘Ben Lomond’.
The S.S. ‘Ben Lomond’ of 6,630 tons was in ballast on a voyage from Port Said and Table Bay (Cape of Good Hope) bound for Paramaribo and New York when it was torpedoed by U-Boat U.172 commanded by KL Kark Emmermann on the 23rd November 1942. Its position was estimated at 00 30 N 38 45 W, which is approximately 800 miles east of the mouth of the Amazon. Of the 4 7 crew and 8 gunners, only one member of the crew survived. He was a Chinese steward who was picked up off the mouth of the Amazon from a raft after 133 days.
Philip has no known grave but is remembered on Panel 16 of the Merchant Navy Memorial to the Missing at Trinity Square, Tower Hill in London.
He was the son of Albert and Ellen Twigg and lived in Pulter's Way, Hitchin. He was married and his wife's name was Marguerite Sybil Twigg of Hitchin.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Hitchin Grammar School Chronicle, Mr Robert Walmsley - Hitchin Boys School Governor, ‘British Vessels Lost at Sea 1939-45’ by HMSO, ‘U-Boat Operations in the 2nd World War' by K. Wynn
